Our Story
by ElvenJediWitch
Summary: Everyone knows Agents Fitz and Simmons as the inseparable genius scientists working in S.H.E.I.L.D., but does anyone know their backstory? This is the story of how they came to S.H.E.I.L.D., overcame their trials, and became FitzSimmons.
1. Leaving

Jemma Simmons had never really been a social person. That was just one the issues she had. All of the orphanage children were younger than she was, and they were kind of weirded out by her genius, as were most of the people who came to see about adopting her. Growing up in a British orphanage where she had always been the little ponytailed geek who was constantly working on some new, huge project outside of school, where she continuously got top marks, didn't leave much spare time for friends. The day she discovered a formula that could potentially make the orphanage ratter cat jump five times higher and run five times faster, had been the proudest day of her life. When she mixed it into the catfood and it worked, she had screeched so loud, the she woke up the younguns and had to help She had never done anything like this before, but now she wanted to do more.

The closest Jemma ever really had to a friend was the runner of the orphanage, Miss Emily. When she had gotten over the initial shock of her beloved cat going from the back playing yard to the front porch in less than a second, she decided to take the talents of her young charge to good use. She found a biochemistry science fair at a local college and immediately began to pull strings to get the thirteen year old girl in it, even though she wasn't a college aged student yet. Two months later, just after Jemma's fourteenth birthday, she won a one-year scholarship to the college as well as a blue ribbon, which she immediately put on the award winning grey cat, who looked surprisingly good in blue.

Three days after the winning of the science fair, Miss Emily opened the front door to see a tall black man with an eye patch and two other men in black behind him. She nearly closed the door on them, but the black man walked into the conference room, right next to the entry door as he began to speak.

"Hello Miss Williams. You can call me Mister Nick. I'm interested in," he winced as he said the next word. "adopting this child." He held up a picture of a smiling Jemma holding her prizewinning cat and shaking a judge's hand during the contest. "I will need to be taking her with away with me immediately." He spoke with an American accent.

"I'm afraid I can't you do that sir. You would need to have complete global government clearance and identification to prove it in order to do that. And fancy dressing doesn't prove anything. Now if you'll excuse me, I have an orphanage to take care of." Emily swished her hair and headed out of the room.

"And I have a universe to save. If you look here, you'll see that I do in fact have the clearance you require. Here." Nick held out an open black wallet . In it was a picture of him on an identification card that also included his information, and that information stated that he did not only have global government clearance, but universal clearance as well. It seemed to Emily that he was pretty high up in the rankings of his US government agency, S.H.I.- he closed the wallet nearly on her nose and took it back, folded it up, and put it in his pocket.

Emily cleared her throat "I'll go fetch her then." When she reached the door of the conference room, she turned back. "You don't really want to adopt Jemma, do you?"

"It's more like taking a chance that could end up potentially saving the world someday, ma'm."

Emily nodded and walked up the the stairs to Jemma's room, parting curious little children left and right. She took a deep breath and opened the door. The girl was sprawled out on her bed, her papers strewn about her, doing homework or taking notes on possible ways to crush the growing cancer problem. Or both.

"Hi Miss Emily! I promise I won't forget my dinner duty tonight. I'll be right down after I finish up here." She scribbled down a few more words, and gathered up her papers

"Jemma, once you're done putting your papers away, you'll need to pack your bags. A nice man has come to take you away with him." Emily realized how strange that sounded. She hoped she didn't scare the girl. "It's a kind of adoption."

Jemma blinked. "An adoption? Really? Somebody wants to adopt me? Brilliant! Tell the man I'll be right down." She hurried her packing. It now had a purpose.

Less than ten minutes later, both the girls were standing in front of Mr. Nick. Nick eyed the Simmons girl with a mutter that sounded like, "Not enough muscle. Not a field agent. She'll have to stay in the labs." He sighed. "So you must be the Simmons girl who had made history."

She matched his stare. "Yes I'm Jemma."

"Good. You can call me Director Fury. This way please." He led the way out of the room to the front door. "I can tell you more about what I'm doing here once we rendezvous with our transport."

Jemma grabbed her bags from the agents who had been attempting to pick the up. "Sounds good. Are they out back? I don't see them."

Fury thought that small girl was having trouble with her bags, the way she kept shifting them. He took a bag off her shoulder. It was heavier that he thought it would be. _Maybe we can make a field agent out of her yet. _

He cracked one of his rare smiles at Jemma. "Yeah, somewhere around there. Let's get going."


	2. Meeting

It was now two days since Jemma had been taken from her orphanage home and moved to this huge building in America, but she still didn't now where. Somewhere secluded, because all she could see from her window was trees for miles around. Director Fury, as she now called Mr. Nick from the orphanage, had given her a pass that gave her access to her room, the library, and the room of her partner, whom she was supposed to meet that day.

She knew nothing about who they were giving her for a partner. A boy, or a girl? British like her, African, American, Indian, she didn't care. Just so long as he wasn't one of those Scots. Ugh she hated Scottish men. So vulgar and full of liquor. A scottish girl wouldn't be that bad, and young men can always be turned away from bad habits with time and dedication…

Jemma rose up from her bed where she had been reading a required book on quantum physics and the string theory, and decided to pick up another book in the library. She would pick up another book, but not on quantum physics and string theory. Jemma wanted a challenge, but she had never been that interested in physics. It was biochem that really caught her attention.

She ran through the hallways with her book clutched to her chest heading to the library, relishing in the fact that the hallways as the college aged students training to be field agents that lived in that section were in their classes. Jemma slowed to a jog as she neared the library, but that didn't stop her from crashing to the ground when she hit what seemed to be an invisible wall. Brushing her hair out of her face, (_I should really be wearing all this in a ponytail. _She thought inwardly_) _she looked up to see a boy shimmer into view. He had a sturdy, square build, and he could not have been much older than she. Some of the girls that she had been living with for the past eight years would have considered him "cute."

"Oi! You bloody broke my watch! I've been working on this thing for more than a year!" The boy's reddish-brown curls nearly covered his angry blue eyes. "Do you have any idea how mush this equipment cost?"

"I'm so sorry! I didn't know you were there!" Jemma tried to apologize to the boy, but was so flustered at the realization that he had been invisible because of his watch. "Maybe if you hadn't been sneaking around like that I wouldn't have broken your watch."

"Oh you're a Sassenach. No wonder you crashed into me." His face was a furious shade of red. "You clumsy little-"

"So that's how it's going to be. Fine then. I won't be talking to you, you Jock." Jemma stood up, brushed herself off, swished her hair, and flounced off, heading back to her dormitory. "Little freaking jerk. Thinks he's so smart. Him and his special expensive equipment."

"She continued to walk down the hallway, straight into the back of a certain Nick Fury. He turned around quickly, as if he was being attacked. Then again, he did have no idea what hit him.

"Oh. It's you, Simmons. I have another agent-in-training out looking for your new partner, who also seems to have wandered off. He's probably looking for the labs. But he won't be able to get in." They both turned as two pairs of footsteps belonging to two different people came down the hallway. "Here they are now."

One of the figures was tall, lithe, and slender; a young woman with tanned skin, straight brown hair, and piercingly blue eyes, probably a field agent in her last stages of training. The other figure, which was male, Jemma recognized all too well. It was the ginger haired, blue eyed little jock she had literally run into before. His eyes narrowed as he recognized her. His blue eyes…

Fury cleared his throat, probably trying to break the silence that had fallen over the empty hallway. "Simmons, meet Leo Fitz. Fitz, meet Jemma Simmons.

When they simply stood there glaring at each other, Fury said, "Well, shake hands. Say hello. You two will be partners until the end of your career here at S.H.E.I.L.D., so it would be best to get to know each other sooner rather than later."

"Fitz." Jemma shook his hand with what she hoped was one of her best smiles.

"Simmons" Leo smirked.

"Hey, that has a bit of a bit of a ring to it. FitzSimmons. Maybe we should start calling them that, Director Fury. It would save us breath." The unknown agent noted.

"Good idea, agent Hill. Alright FitzSimmons. This way to your lab." He led them along the many hallways that never seemed to end. Jemma made a mental note to memorize them. Finally, they reached a silver door with the familiar S.H.E.I.L.D. crest on it. Above the keypad next to the door, there was a plaque reading _S.H.E.I.L.D. Laboratory_.

"You're lucky it's so close to your rooms." Agent Hill muttered into Jemma's ear, startling her.

"You two must wait in here. Your professor will be in soon. I hope you're ready for some serious and vigorous training." Fury punched in a code on the keypad and the two new partners walked in and sat down at the central table, avoiding each other's gazes. Jemma opened her physics book, which she was still holding, and reread the section referring to the origin of string theory.

After a bit of waiting, the professor walked in the room and told them that they would have to do a test to see where they were in their studies. Jemma was to make a tranquilizer, and the Fitz boy was to make a pistol especially for it.

Two hours into their work, the professor left to go check on one of his patients that had been accidentally exposed to pure gamma radiation. Shortly after, Jemma finished her tranquilizer.

"Oh Fitz," She called out in a singsong voice. "Are you done yet?" She turned to see her new partner slouched in his spinny chair, sipping a soda, his black and silver pistol polished and sitting by his hand.

"I've been done for some time now. I came from a pretty tough school. We were expected to make things that Tony Stark himself would be jealous of before we could even eat breakfast there." He sat up and rolled his chair over to her. "I saw how you had to scrap your first try. Too much Rigor Mortis. Needed more paralysis. You should have been finished long before me. I suppose you came from a pretty good school too, huh?"

Jemma blushed. "Actually, I came from a London orphanage. I won a college level science fair with a super-cat formula I created myself. That's how Fury found me. I have never had any training outside of my Biology and Chemistry 2 classes." She found herself smiling at his astonished look. "Maybe you can teach me a few things."

Fitz' eyes took on a mock arrogant look. :Oh, I don't think I can put up with teaching a smart alek Sassenach. They would probably try to weasel me into taking a lesson in worm dissection as payment. My stomach is't strong enough for that."

"Well, fine. I guess I'm not too keen on being taught by brainless jocks named Leo." Jemma continued the joke, enjoying this period of what seemed to be peace between them.

"You can call me Fitz, Simmons." Fitz muttered as he wheeled back over to his pistol to polish it up.

And Jemma found she really liked the way the way he said her name.

**Authors Note: So yeah this chapter came out pretty fast, so Don't expect the next one to come in so quickly. I have to write it out, then type it up. Soooooooooo yeah. **

**If you have any ideas for future chapters, I have the main storyline figured out, but I'll still need filler. **

**And did anyone else nearly cry when you saw Fitz and Simmons faces at different times in the commercial for episode 7 in two weeks? I WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS! Post comments on your ideas. **

**COMMENTS ARE LIKE PUDDING TO ME! THey make me happy. So please comment on everything. **


	3. Testing

**Sorry this took so long to get out, guys! I had to finish Cabaret, then do a history paper, write a few overdue articles for my school newspaper, and I have yet to memorize my lines for the upcoming one-acts at my school... Oh well. I hope you enjoy this!**

Just over half a year had gone by before Fitz turned sixteen, which meant he was officially and defiantly older than Jemma by little more than a year and a half. She still didn't understand why she got along with the one thing she hadn't wanted as a partner, but somehow, she was growing to enjoy his daily company. They had decided to go only by their last names, even though that was all anybody ever called them by anyways. They sounded more professional that way. Except in Agent Hill's case. Even though she had been the one to give the give the pair the name FitzSimmons, she now called them the science babies. Partially because they were younger than all the other Agents training at the place everyone called the Hub, and partially because (in Fitz' case especially) they were soft like babies. They would have failed in their self defense class if part of the final test hadn't been a written exam.

They usually studied individually, comparing lessons at the end of the day, but today, the professor had them making the super-cat formula that Simmons had created, but there was a twist. The formula also had to make them turn into super cats. Director Fury didn't approve of this project, he said it was too risky and he was afraid of losing two of his best scientists, no matter how young they were. But FitzSimmons were enjoying this. It took them only a few days to reconstruct the exact formula that had been used before, but now they had to figure out how to turn themselves into the cats.

"Honestly, I feel like Hermione. You know, from Harry Potter? Trying to make a potion to morph myself into another shape and form. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought I would be working in a lab like this, training to become a secret agent." Simmons was being her usual, bubbly self, even though she had only gotten two and a half hours of sleep. Meanwhile, Fitz was a bit more miserable and jumpy from his apparent exhaustion.

"I never thought I would be here either. Working for a secret US government agency. I always thought I would go to college in London, and then work for the Scotland Yard making weapons. Not working with a biochemist to try my hand at turning humans into cats." Fitz turned and muttered some more. "I'd rather be turning us onto monkeys. Cats are dumb." Just to prove his point, he brought out his "lucky monkey", a tiny plush thing on a keychain named Sylvester.

Simmons chuckled softly to herself. Fitz and his monkeys. She worked on with only the occasional cough, yawn or sneeze breaking the silence. Few words were needed for the two of them to communicate by this point. Eventually, they put on classic music, Mussorgsky to be exact, to help them start thinking. Eventually they finished their work and since Simmons was very much against testing on lab rats except for in extreme conditions, they did the smart thing. They went straight to testing on themselves. Luckily, their professor wasn't in the room, so they drank their concoctions, which had turned a muddy brown after Fitz added his contribution to Simmons' blue mixture.

Immediately, Simmons began to feel a change. It was a ticklish and painful metamorphosis. Her face grew shorter, her nose and upper lip connected and elongated. Her fingers slightly shortened and her skin grew gray and silver tabby striped fur. Her ears shrunk into her head, and new ears sprouted from somewhere near the top of her head. She felt her spine grow longer as a tail poked out of her lower back. Then, she realized that something was wrong. Her tail had far too much muscle, her ears were rounder than they should be, her fingers hadn't shortened enough to be paws, and the biggest problem she noticed, she was standing upright. Her bone structure hadn't changed much at all.

"Fitz," Simmons turned to her partner to see that he too was in a situation like hers with only a few differences. His fur was a russet brown color, not gray, and his tail was a cat's tail. Lucky him. She looked in his hand and saw his little monkey friend that he usually kept in his backpack. Then she knew. "FITZ! You did not put monkey DNA in here. Tell me you did not." All cheeriness was gone from her voice. Her eyes were ice cold.

For the first time since he met her, Fitz was scared of the petite British girl. With what little bit that was left of her face that wasn't covered in gray fur was turned into an angry scowl. He looked down to avoid her gaze to see that he too was covered in fur. Funny he hadn't noticed it sprout out of him…

"Well, I was talking to Sylvester and thinking about what wonderful and inspiring monkeys are compared to cats, and well, I guess I got a bit sidetracked when getting the DNA together." He saw her keep glaring. "I'm sorry, Jem."

Her glare disappeared. "What did you just call me?"

"Jem. I thought it's faster to say than Jemma or Simmons, isn't it?" He asked sheepishly. "It sounds pretty too." He added much quieter, hoping she didn't hear him.

"Yeah I guess it does." Simmons said with a shrug. "Now how are we going to fix this issue?" She motioned to her furry arms, legs, and well, everything.

"Lucky for you," Fitz ran (or scampered) over to one of the stainless steel cabinets kept nice and neat in the lab, opened it up, and pulled out his silver pistol that he had created for the sedative they had created when they first met, as well as a cylinder containing some sort of clear liquid. "I made an anti-serum." He walked back over to her. "May I do the honors?" He asked, his face half serious and half amused.

Simmons nodded, and almost immediately felt a sharp pain in her arm. All of her fur sank back into her skin, her face and ears went back to normal, and her tail shrunk into a nub and then altogether disappeared, all in a matter of seconds. "Here, give me that." She grabbed the gun from Fitz as soon as she recovered from the initial shock.

Fitz squirmed and tried his hardest to avoid his injection, as he was apparently afraid of needles. Simmons nearly missed him but was able to get him right in his shoulder. He stared down at himself as he turned back to normal. Well, mostly. His tail was still there.

"Hmm. I guess I have to get the injection in closer to your tail then." Simmons chased him around their lab, trying to get him with his own pistol. "Come here!" She reached out, grabbed his ankle, and tripped him, making him fall hard on the ground. She put her arm across his chest, forcing him to stop squirming and accept his fate and keeping him down as she injected the serum into his upped left leg.

"Bloody hell, Simmons. That really hurt." Fitz began to sit up. Suddenly, their faces were inches apart.

Simmons felt her face grow hot. She didn't want this to happen. Not now. But she found that both their faces were closer than they were a moment ago. Suddenly, out the corner of her eye, she saw the door open. She quickly pushed Fitz away.

"Agents Fitz and Simmons?" It was another close-to-graduation student. This one looked paler than Agent Hill with fiery red hair. "Director Fury sent me to get you. Which one of you is Simmons?" She asked in a bored voice. Simmons raised her hand.

"Please follow me. We found your parents."


End file.
